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Christians were told in the first century that the world that hated and persecuted their Savior would similarly hate and persecute them. This divine counsel certainly holds up two millennia later.
'The Biden administration was willing to tolerate Christians up to a point.'
According to the watchdog group Open Doors, over 315 million Christians today face very high or extreme persecution, with thousands murdered yearly over their faith. While the top 10 worst countries for Christians are all in Africa, Asia, and the Indian subcontinent, Christians are also routinely subjected to violent attacks, discrimination, and state suppression in purportedly civilized Western nations.
In America, for instance, hostility toward Christians, their faith, and their institutions came to a head during the Biden administration, which not only turned a blind eye to a rash of anti-Christian attacks but adopted policies that formalized the underlying animus.
Seeking to "end the anti-Christian weaponization of government and unlawful conduct targeting Christians" and rectify the wrongs committed by his predecessor's government, President Donald Trump established the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias last year.
Camille Varone, senior counsel at the Justice Department, gave Allie Beth Stuckey, host of BlazeTV's "Relatable," an exclusive look this week at the culmination of the task force's efforts to date: a damning report detailing both the anti-Christian bias propagated by the federal government during the Biden administration and what the Trump administration has done and is doing to protect Americans' religious liberties.
"The Biden administration used transgenderism as an excuse, as a justification, for discriminating against Christian doctors, medical facilities, against churches, against Catholic schools, specifically," Stuckey said in summary. "And then, of course, there was the targeting of the pro-lifers. Even within the DOJ, there was an attitude of anti-Christian discrimination and the feeling that Christians really didn't count as a protected class, and that manifested itself in very real, illegal prejudice against Christians."
RELATED: The anti-Christian myth of First Amendment 'neutrality'
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"What we found is that across the board, the Biden administration was willing to tolerate Christians up to a point, and that was when they held their views privately or in the four walls of their churches," Varone told Stuckey.
"When Christians were trying to live out their faith — to see where the Bible, where religious tradition should inform how they actually, you know, went to school, went to work — that's where they ran into policy issues."
Varone — drawing from the findings of the 200-page written report, which is accompanied by over 300 pages of receipts plus thousands of footnotes — highlighted in her conversation with Stuckey numerous anti-Christian governmental abuses and policies advanced under President Joe Biden, who professes to be Catholic, including how Biden's
- DOJ pursued aggressive prosecutions against nonviolent, pro-life Christian demonstrators under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act while taking a markedly less enthusiastic approach to holding leftists, such as members of Jane's Revenge, responsible for attacks against pregnancy resource centers;
- Internal Revenue Service apparently targeted churches and Christian organizations whose religious values aligned with conservative political views but did not similarly hound churches where progressive views and Democratic causes were championed;
- administration, working off a liberal reading of the Supreme Court's ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, sought to mandate the adoption of its views on sexual preferences and gender ideology; and
- administration ran roughshod over "sincere religious objections" to the COVID-19 vaccines.
- Equal Employment Opportunity Commission implemented a rule requiring employers — including Christian organizations — to accommodate workers' efforts to abort their unborn children;
- FBI investigated, surveilled, and stigmatized law-abiding traditional Catholics, in part due to bogus claims from the scandal-plagued Southern Poverty Law Center; and
- Department of Health and Human Services attempted to bar Christian providers and would-be parents who hold biblical and scientifically grounded views about sex and marriage from the foster-care system.
The task force reached the conclusion that "in its zealous pursuit of its preferred policies and constituents, the Biden administration engaged in anti-Christian bias, seeking to limit Christians’ ability to act in concert with their sincerely held beliefs in their homes, in the workplace, and in the public square. At times, it went still further, leading Christians to reportedly choose between their beliefs and compliance with federal law."
Stuckey asserted that "this should really disturb everyone" regardless of whether they're a Christian.
Varone agreed, reiterating, "What we found here really should disturb everyone who holds religious beliefs because if the government can do that against a majority group, nobody's rights are safe under that kind of system."
"No American should live in fear that the federal government will punish them for their faith," acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, chair of the task force, said in a statement.
"As our report lays out, the Biden administration’s actions devastated the lives of many Christian Americans," continued Blanche. "That devastation ended with President Trump. The Department of Justice will continue to expose bad actors who targeted Christians and work tirelessly to restore religious liberty for all Americans of faith."
Stuckey expressed gratitude that people are being "aware that things like this are happening," in part because it "encourages us to know our constitutional rights, and that can only be a win."
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